


Midnight in Arda

by lossie



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Romance, F/M, I don't know what I'm doing, Slow Build, but I'm having a lot of fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 07:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lossie/pseuds/lossie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Focused completely on staying as quiet as possible, she somehow missed the fact that the ground underneath her feet was becoming a bit too slippery and soggy to be considered normal.</p><p>Then, suddenly, there was no ground underneath her feet at all."</p><p>Eventual Thranduil/OC, Hobbit AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight in Arda

**Author's Note:**

> That’s what watching “The Hobbit” and “Midnight in Paris” one after the other can do to you ;)  
> I was thinking about writing something like this for a while now, but I lacked any good ideas for the plot and I didn’t want to simply make it a stupid rom-com with elements of interdimensional travel. Thankfully, I finally got inspired by a paper I wrote for my Creative Writing class two weeks ago and since then I have been working on this story. I think I’ve managed to make it somewhat believable. I hope you’ll think so as well :)  
> Enjoy the madness and please, don’t forget to comment/review!  
> For those of you who are waiting for the updates of my other fics: I will get to them and publish something before the week is over, I promise, but I’m still ill and, just so you know, writing isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do when you have a high fever ;)

“ _Invisible threads are the strongest ties_.”  
-Frederick Nietzsche

* * *

 

  
There was nothing even remotely interesting about Peddington Valley in Surrey.  
  
It was a small town 57 miles West from London and a home to approximately 3,258 citizens. They had two intersections, three main roads, one small shopping mall and a nice marker square. There was also one smelly little pub called “Daisy’s”. The name was quite bizarre, because the owner’s name was Paul and the place had hardly anything to do with the flowers, since it smelled like something had died and then decomposed in there. People who lived in Peddington Valley were simple-minded, hard-working folk, who liked to busy themselves with other people’s businesses almost as much as their own. As in all small towns, everyone seemed to know who was up to what at any given moment and enjoyed talking about it immensely.  
  
Rodwen Jones has lived there her entire life. There had been a short period of time when she had moved to London to attend a summer school for about three months, but apart from that she hardly ever left the town. She liked things how they were here – calm, simple, unchangeable, and mostly undisturbed. Of course there were times when even Peddington Valley got a bit hectic, but it didn’t happen very often. There was that one time when her neighbour, Miss Parker, had broken her hip when she slipped on the icy sidewalk in January two years ago or when Mr Wanderson had been arrested for stealing a six-pack from a local store a while back. If you counted those out, nothing out of ordinary ever happened in her town. That was what she liked and why she never even thought about moving somewhere else. No disruptions meant no problems and no problems meant that she could concentrate on her art in peace without people getting on her case.  
  
Her mother died when Rodwen was eleven and her father was too busy with his work to pay her much attention. Since she didn’t have any siblings or cousins and the rest of the family lived in either Northern Ireland or in the USA, she had spent her teenage years alone. It had been a painful transition for a child used to the constant presence of an adult. Her mom had been a housewife and she had always been there for Rodwen, whenever she needed her. After she passed away, there had been no one to welcome Rodwen home after school, no one to make her dinner and no one to simply talk with. Her father was forced to stay at home to take care of her, but he did a rather poor job of being a parent. He spent his days in his laboratory in the old shed behind the house or in one of the huge greenhouses in the backyard, working on his precious plants. There was no time in his schedule for a teenage girl, even if she was in fact his only child.  
  
As the years went by, she had resigned herself to a life of solitude.  
  
Art became the answer to her loneliness. It was also the last connection she had to her mother, as the woman had been a talented artist and passed on most of her knowledge onto Rodwen, who had soaked every word and instruction like a sponge.  
  
“Dad! You said you would come out and eat! It’s almost midnight!” She banged on the door to the shed, impatient and already slightly irritated. It was the fourth time she had come out of the house to ask him to come out and eat something, and she promised herself it would be the last one. She was neither his maid, nor his housekeeper.  
  
Even though her father was finally back from one of his many trips, she had seen him maybe two or three times in the last few days. He had returned to travelling the world shortly after Rodwen’s eighteenth birthday five years ago and since then he was rarely ever home, living mostly on a suitcase and sending her meaningless gifts that were probably supposed to compensate for his lack of involvement in her life. She didn’t hate him for how he treated her, because she understood that he was simply not the type of person who knew how to deal with people, but it didn’t stop her from wishing that he would at least show her that he truly loved her from time to time.  
  
“I’m coming!” Her father yelled and, surprisingly enough, the door to the shed opened a moment later, revealing Dr Graham Jones in all his crazy scientist glory. “Sorry, sweetheart. I was in the middle of something.”  
  
Rodwen rolled her eyes in exasperation.  
  
“You are always in the middle of something,” she said as she made her way to the back door of the house without bothering to check if her father was following or not. “It’s chicken curry today. I will heat it up for you.”  
  
“Would you mind if I ran back in for a minute?” He asked and she froze at his words with her hand on the doorknob. “I think I forgot to…”  
  
“Oh, for the love of…! Dad!” Rodwen interrupted him before he had a chance to finish. The urge to scream bloody murder was overwhelming, but she somehow managed to stop herself, if only barely. She turned around, put her hands on her hips, and gave her slightly startled father the best stern look she could muster. “Do you even remember the last time you have eaten something? Because I certainly do not.”  
  
“I ate those granola bars you’ve put in the shed…” He admitted after a moment of silence. “They are pretty nutritious.”  
  
“But they are just snacks. They are not a proper meal.” She felt completely ridiculous explaining it to him. There were certain things that he should have known without her needing to explain it to him over and over again, because he was both an adult and a man of science. The discussion about what was considered good food and what was simply a stomach filler occurred at least once every single time her father came home from one of his journeys. Sometimes she wondered if he would even eat anything at all if she wasn’t there to pester him about it. To be honest, she didn’t really want to know the answer to that. “You are a biologist, dad. And you know I’m right.”  
  
He simply shrugged his shoulders, as if he didn’t really care one way or another, which was probably the case. Thankfully, he didn’t try to argue with her this time and followed her inside the house without saying anything else.  
  
When they reached their kitchen, Rodwen busied herself with heating up the leftovers and making a pot of tea for the both of them. From the corner of her eye she could see her father as he gingerly sat down on one of the three mismatched chairs in front of the small ebony table, his facial expression showing just how much he didn’t want to be here. He was looking rather suspiciously at the impressive pile of unopened mail, all addressed to him, which has accumulated over the last couple of weeks when he was away in South America. After a few long minutes of just staring at the envelopes, he started to sort through them, sighing every now and again in a way that strongly suggested the activity was some form of elaborate torture.  
  
The chicken sizzled as she stirred it on the frying pan with a wooden spoon. She jumped and hissed when droplets of hot oil hit the exposed skin of her arm.  
  
“You okay?” Her father asked as he absentmindedly flipped through a copy of ‘National Geographic’.  
  
“Fine,” she mumbled under her breath, moving to the sink to spray some cold water over the irritated skin. “Could you move the papers from the table?”  
  
“Hn,” was the only answer she got, vague and unclear as it was. She didn’t check if he listened to her and instead focused her attention on getting the food on the plate without injuring herself any further.  
  
“Here you go. “ She put the plateful of curry in front of him along with a cup of steaming mint tea before turning to the countertop to fetch her own cup and the tea pot. After putting the later onto the table, she leaned against the kitchen island and observed her father as he ate his latest dinner to date.  
  
He was a fairly handsome man in his mid-fifties. His pepper-and-salt hair hasn’t been cut in some time and it now reached his ears, falling about his angular and slightly wrinkled face in a mess of bouncy curls. He was tall and lean, and very pale. The pair of thick glasses that was perched on the bridge of his long straight nose only added to the overall image of a stereotypical scientist, though the look suited him. His eyes were an interesting shade of cobalt blue, mixed with a bit of green here and there. Under closer inspection it was fairly easy to see rings of golden brown around his pupils, which made the other colours stand out even more. It was one of the only features she inherited from him, apart from the shape of her lips and the texture of her unruly hair.  
  
She didn’t know what her mother had seen in this strange man that seemed to be completely removed from the reality most of the time, but there must have been something special about him. It was hard to understand, mostly because Rodwen could hardly claim that she knew her father to any extent.  
  
“It’s really good.”  
  
His comment made her snap out of her thoughts. She blinked at him owlishly before giving him a small smile as she noticed a smudge of curry sauce on his left cheek. With a shake of her head, she handled him a piece of a paper towel, pointing at her own face to show him what he needed to do.  
  
“You are like a little boy trapped in a body of an adult man,” she said with a sigh, which made him laugh.  
  
“Probably,” he agreed, pushing his now empty plate aside. He took a careful sip of his tea. “But then again, we never quite stop being children, do we?”  
  
“I suppose not.”  
  
They shared a rare moment of comfortable silence, simply enjoying each other’s presence for the time being. It was quite nice and Rodwen found herself wishing, not for the first time, that such moments would come by more often. Alas, it wasn’t probably going to happen any time soon. Her father was too preoccupied by his work to pay attention to her petty wishes at any rate. Before long he was done with sitting around. He refilled his half-empty cup and, after exchanging with her a heartfelt good night, he went back to his laboratory, the copy of ‘National Geographic’ and the rest of his still unopened correspondence safely tucked underneath his right arm.  
  
A soft sigh escaped her lips as she finished her cup of tea in the slightly oppressing silence of the now empty kitchen. She washed the dishes when she was done, humming a song she has heard on the radio a few days ago as she worked. Leaving wet plates and cutlery to dry on their own, she turned off most of the lights in the house, leaving on only the ones in the main hall. She changed into her night clothes, which consisted of a floor-length green cotton dress with long sleeves and a pair of knee-high socks, and went to bed with a book in tow.  
  
Reading usually helped her quickly fall asleep, but for some reason she couldn’t find easy rest that night no matter how much she tried to relax and enjoy the light romance novel. It took her a long time before she even started to yawn and then some more to finally feel somewhat sleepy. She decided to put away the book only after she had actually managed to doze off for a moment.  
  
It was shortly after she had switched off the little lamp at her bedside and turned herself into a human burrito with no less than three blankets than she heard loud barking coming from somewhere outside. She sat up in her bed as quickly as she could, given the amount of fabrics wrapped snugly around her, realizing that she has completely forgotten to check if her dog was actually home before turning in for the night.  
  
The chocolate brown Labrador, Hazel, was by no means a puppy, but she did act like one. It was impossible to predict what the infernal dog would come up with next, since she seemed to enjoy getting on Rodwen’s nerves more than was strictly necessary. She loved to sneak out of the house for a run in the backyard or, on occasions, in the forest that stretched far into the distance just beyond the fence. When she returned, she was usually covered in mud, smelled like a public toilet, and carried with her some sort of treasure aka an old shoe or a particularly large tree branch. The fence was no barrier at all for the sneaky dog, since she has somehow learnt how to open the garden gate with her snout and used the ability with alarming frequency.  
  
Rodwen groaned at the prospect of looking for an almost black dog in the middle of the cold autumn night, but she still rose from the bed and went downstairs , all the while promising herself that she would strangle Hazel the next time she got a hold of her.  
  
The lights in the hall were off, which meant that her father must have come back from the shed at some point during the last few hours. She flicked it on as she made her way to the walk-in closet near the main entrance to the house from which she took a pair of run-down black sneakers and a patchy jacket she had bought in a second-hand store during her stay in London. Armed with an umbrella and determined to deal with the situation at hand as quickly as possible, she walked down the hall and out the back door.  
  
The backyard was illuminated by the dim light of the moon above, but that was hardly helpful at all. Since Hazel had stopped barking, Rodwen had no idea where to go, so she decided to simply walk around while calling the dog’s name and see if it would do any good. It took her approximately half an hour to realize that her efforts were futile at best, but, since hope was the unlucky mother of the stupid, she opted to take the longer way back, which basically meant abandoning the relative safety of the walkways between the greenhouses and walking around them before passing through the part of the garden which laid in the shadow of the forest. It wasn’t exactly an appealing idea, but Rodwen absolutely refused to give up. Besides she highly doubted she would get much sleep at this point anyway, so wasting a few more minutes wandering around in darkness wasn’t really that big of an issue.  
  
She rounded the corner of the last greenhouse in the row and stood there for a moment, looking over what was left of her mother’s old garden.  
  
All of the flower beds that had been carefully planted and looked after for many long years were gone, replaced by uneven patches of dead grass and some persistent weeds. The arbour with a little bench in the middle, which had been covered with lovely light pink and deep red roses, was now bare of them and seemed almost naked. She remembered how much her mother liked to sit there, surrounded by the sweet and slightly intoxicating smell, and sketch for hours on end. It was a sad sight to witness, but Rodwen felt like it would have been a crime to touch anything, because for some reason it only seemed right to let the garden wither and die along with its rightful owner.  
  
However, there was one part of it that remained unchanged over the years.  
  
The garden gate.  
  
It had been carved in cedar wood and stood proudly as a guard of sorts, separating the house and the piece of land around it from the wildness of the forest . The frame of it reminded her of entwined tree branches, which were adorned with small leaves and blooming flowers. It spread over the upper edges of the fence, creating an illusion of it being alive. The gate itself was relatively simple, as it consisted of a plane piece of glossed wood, but upon closer inspection it wasn’t hard to see some strange runic symbols engraved near the top. In her youth, Rodwen had often wondered if they meant anything, but after years of unsuccessful research and checking in every book she could find about foreign languages, she finally gave up. Although beautiful and certainly enigmatic, it was probably just a design of some sort. All the same, she had been delighted to play the part of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft during the long days of summer for a little while, when there was scarcely anything else she could do.  
  
Her eyes narrowed when she noticed that the gate was ajar, even though she clearly remembered closing it two days ago when she had last ventured there.  
  
It could mean only one thing.  
  
She huffed in annoyance, securing her hold on the handle of the umbrella.  
  
Hazel apparently couldn’t be dissuaded from going where she wasn’t supposed to go and decided that the middle of the night was as good time as any to explore the woods. If Rodwen hadn’t been particularly excited about being alone in the dark before, she was now well beyond the point of caring. With careful steps, she walked to the gate and pushed it open with the tip of the umbrella. The hinges screeched loudly, making her wince, but she suspected it didn’t make much of difference. She had never actually seen any animal this close to the house, so after a brief moment of ill-founded hesitation, she stepped fully into the forest, taking a deep breath to prepare herself for what she was about to do.  
  
“Hazel?” She called out into the trees, but there was no response.  
  
She was vigilant as she walked, her feet making barely any sound against the ground, which was covered in a thick layer of dead moist leaves and small branches. There was no light whatsoever to guide her, since the moon was completely obscured by the foliage, and the impenetrable darkness put her on edge. All was quiet and still. Not even a gush of wind seemed eager to disturb the eerie silence.  
  
For a while nothing happened. She called out after Hazel two more times, but the lack of any sort of comeback made her stop after the third try. A soft hum in the air that seemed to grow louder and louder made her shiver, but she paid it little mind. Focused completely on staying as quiet as possible, she somehow missed the fact that the ground underneath her feet was becoming a bit too slippery and soggy to be considered normal.  
  
Then, suddenly, there was no ground underneath her feet at all.  
  
She screamed as she felt, trying in vain to hold onto something with no success. With a loud splash, she landed in a river of some sort, though it was hardly any consolation as the swift currently made it difficult for her to keep her head over the surface. Frantically gasping for air any chance she got, she tried to comprehend what was happening, but it was hard to focus on anything other than breathing. She had no idea how long she had been fighting for her life against the ice-cold water before she bumped against a fallen tree that was still partially lodged into the ground and managed to wrap her arms around its rough surface, which saved her from being carried even further away.  
  
Pupils dilated in fright and her entire body trembling from the cold, she took her time getting her breathing under control, which wasn’t an easy task, considering the circumstances. When she was more or less able to inhale and exhale without getting into a coughing fit from all the water that managed to get into her windpipe during the worst swim of her entire life, she tightened her hold around the tree and took a look around through a curtain of her wet ginger hair.  
  
The woods didn’t look familiar at all. The sole fact that there was no river to speak of in any close proximity to her house made her wonder if she wasn’t having a very vivid dream, though everything else pointed against this theory. In the faint light of predawn her surroundings appeared unwelcoming and the shadows around her only seemed to grow with every passing minute. The side of the river she was closer to looked a bit less intimidating and hostile, but only just so. There was simply something there, almost tangible in the air, that made her shiver, this time not from the penetrating cold of the water. It was foul and evil, and bore a wretchedness previously known to her.  
  
She was trying to stop her teeth from chattering when she heard a noise to her left. Her head snapped in that direction immediately in alarm and her eyes widened when they landed on the most elegant creature she has ever seen.  
  
Its antlers resembled that of a moose in its size and shape, but the animal itself looked more like a large stag with its slim muzzle and light brown pelt. Head tilted to the side, it seemed to scrutinize her with wise dark eyes that shone with untold intelligence.  
  
They stared at each other for a few long minutes before he started to whicker, which sounded awfully as if he was laughing at her expense.  
  
“Well, at least one of us is having fun,” she muttered, the grimace on her face a sure sign of her displeasure. The animal’s ears twitched and she could swear that there was amusement dancing in his eyes, which were still trained on her pitiful form.  
  
“I must be losing my marbles.” She shook her head as if trying to clear it of stupid thoughts. “I’m about to freeze to death in an imaginary river and I’m talking to a freaking moose… Yep, definitely going crazy.”  
  
For some reason or another, the strange creature looked mortally affronted at being referred to as ‘a freaking moose’, though she didn’t know why she even cared. It was an animal. It couldn’t possibly understand what she was saying. Then again, she was quite possibly dreaming this all up and, last time she checked, anything could happen in a dream.  
  
Since simple solutions were usually the best ones, she decided to just ask him instead of thinking about it too hard and giving herself a headache in the process.  
  
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”  
  
She felt incredibly foolish, but there was no other way to know for sure. To her utter astonishment, the animal nodded almost immediately and whickered loudly as if to confirm it even further.  
  
“Okay, that’s an interesting development…,” was her hesitant response to the revelation. “Can you, by any chance, help me get out?” She shifted a bit and yelp when her hands slipped over the wet wood, almost causing her to let go. “It would mean a world, honestly…”  
  
The animal gave her a look that clearly suggested that he thought she wasn’t overly bright, which made her blood boil inside her half-frozen body, but before she had a chance comment on it, he bolted from the spot and disappeared in the trees a split second later.  
  
“That’s just awesome!” She jammed her forehead on the tree in resignation and then groaned in pain, because it actually hurt. A lot. “I’m so freaking stupid…”  
  
There went the stories about helpful animals in all the fairytales. It was all a fluke.  
  
She was going to either drown or freeze to death in a river in the middle of bumfucknowhere, because she couldn’t keep an eye on her own dog and then decided to go alone into the forest in the middle of the night like the biggest idiot imaginable.  
  
The thought of Hazel made her heart squeeze painfully.  
  
Did her dog face the same peril? If so, was there anyone in this forsaken forest who had managed to save her in time? Rodwen certainly hoped that her faithful, albeit slightly clueless, companion was alright somewhere, no matter where exactly.  
  
Her vision blurred slightly with exhaustion and unwanted tears. Her limbs were so stiff with cold that she could barely hold onto the tree any longer. With a soft exhale, she let go, intent on letting the current carry her to her possible death, but before her fingers could fully slid off the wood, a pair of pale strong hands shot out from above her and caught her wrists in an iron hold. In one smooth motion she was hauled out of the water and scooped up into her saviour’s arms with practised ease.  
  
“ _Av-'osto_ ,” someone said in a soft lilting voice that rumbled against her ear where it laid pressed against the person’s warm broad chest and those words brought her peace, even if she didn’t know what they meant.  
  
Completely drained of all strength, she fell unconscious a moment later and knew no more.


End file.
